About Us

Chairman’s Message

The Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Florida Gainesville is an independent academic department within the College of Medicine. With the substantial infrastructure and resources from the State’s Flagship University dedicated to the missions of research and education, we are committed to training medical students and residents to become superior well-rounded clinicians that have the skills to become educators, researchers, and leaders in emergency medicine.

Emergency Medicine faculty are dedicated to providing the highest quality of clinical emergency care in several of our Gainesville clinical locations. The level one Trauma Center at UF Health Shands Adult ER is a 37,000 square foot, 66-bed state-of-the-art critical care center with an annual volume of over 65,000 visits per year. The facility, which was built in 2009, is designed to improve patient throughput and to provide the infrastructure for expert critical and trauma care, exposing resident physicians to a unique cross section in their health care delivery experience. UF Health Shands is the only burn center in northern Florida with a catchment area spanning 13 counties with patient referrals extending to Alabama and Georgia.

UF Health Shands Pediatric ER, located in a separate tower, is 21 bed facility that currently sees over 24,000 pediatric visits per year. The state-of-the-art facility was renovated in 2011 and is staffed by UF board-certified or board-eligible pediatric emergency medicine physicians who are Faculty in the Department of Emergency Medicine.

Our newest facility is the UF Health Shands Emergency Center – Springhill located on NW 39th Avenue. Opened to patients on Aug. 1 2013, this freestanding facility is an 8,500 square foot, 10 bed, 911 receiving facility that is open 24/7 and is staffed by UF Emergency Medicine faculty . The facility boasts full imaging capabilities including CT Scanning and US, as well as laboratory services and blood banking.

Our Department supports a residency program fully accredited by the ACGME, as well as several fellowship programs. The residency program was expertly developed with a modular human simulation based curriculum at its core. It has experienced remarkable expansion and growth in its pursuit of excellence in resident training and has become fully established over the course of the last decade; our Program is accredited until 2020.

The research mission of the Department of Emergency Medicine is to foster an active atmosphere of academic excellence through the support of undergraduate, medical student, resident, fellow and faculty research and scholarly productivity. Our faculty are involved in a variety of clinical and basic science research projects, as well as health services research. The UF Health Science Center is the country’s only academic health center with six health-related colleges, six major research institutes and versatile research facilities located on a single, contiguous campus. The UF Health Science Center, including our major research centers, institutes and clinical enterprise, receives more than $300 million in NIH and other extramural funding Our location on the university campus has opened doors to opportunities for significant collaborations with other departments, colleges and centers across the undergraduate and professional campus including the Emerging Pathogens Institute and the Universities’ research initiatives at Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).

Our Department also has an active pre-hospital care division that provides medical direction for our hospital based EMS services which supports ground, rotatory and fixed wing EMS operations. Our Department provides EMS medical direction for municipalities covering an area of North Central Florida that extends to the Gulf Coast. Faculty from our Department had also provided primary medical direction for NASA medical support teams during the last 10 years of the NASA Space Shuttle Missions. Medical support team members received special certifications from NASA and participated in disaster training and onsite simulations in order to provide medical support for all NASA shuttle missions that originated from Cape Canaveral. Today, the University of Florida maintains a close relationship with NASA.

Our team at UF Health is dedicated to providing the highest quality of clinical emergency care. You will not find a group of faculty more dedicated to the teaching mission of the UF College of Medicine or an atmosphere more open and collegial for residency training. It is our goal to continue to advance the field of emergency medicine, improve patient care, and to provide the academic environment for innovative research.

Please explore our site and contact us if you are interested in being part of our growing team at UF Health and the University of Florida, Gainesville.